Taking the ‘He’ out of HelixVisualised by archtomato On Friday, December 30, 2005 at 5:14 Hrs | Minimum B.S.

Ok ok,

I was lazing around the office watching Starwars EP3 DVD today when i came across this book. "Are men neccessary", by Maureen Dowd.

"Men already have their eviction notice from the planet since geneticists agree that the Y-chromosone is melting faster than the wicked witch of the west.There are some who think in 100,00 years or so, We’ll just need a few semen slaves to milk and that women can handle the rest from refinancing to reproduction, on their own. Do you want to apply for that job?", says dowd.

Not if i were the last man on earth, mars and jupiter with a lot of naked women by my side. For Dowd, the question of whether men are biologically nessessary is secondary. The basis argument is not that men are expendable, but that men suck.

Sure. Men are responsible for the pyramids, the Magna Carta, Brown Sugar, the Ipod, motion pictures, the landing on the moon, smallpox vaccine, theory of relativity, Coca-Cola and the Great wall of China. But men still suck. They are mean, ignorant, short tempered, and love to play with the remote. Infact, lets start a "Lets-Make-Men-Extinct" movement an turn the control to the miffed, pissed off, dateless and insane women.

Dowds’s words and ideas maybe be funny and lighthearted, i grant her that, But what worries me is that what starts out as a fringe movement, may quietly gather gale force and crush everything in its path, including me.

Today, we can laugh at the notion that men may be replaced, just like we laughed when Bill Gates claimed "16mb of Ram is enough for everyone".

Tomorrow, there may be none of us eft to laugh. Worse is, some of the people propagating the notion that men are extraneous, are men themselves. Well, girlie men.

Many people don’t get how malicious hackers do their work. In this article, I will explain how they do it.Hacking is not magic. If your computer gets hacked, it’s not the most amazing thing in the world. In fact, it takes almost no skill to “hack” into a computer. A simple point and click? Oh, right! And the keyboard. There are many tools on the internet that allow anyone to hack… No skill needed; the program does it all fo them. These programs are usually classified as “script-kiddie”, or “skidde”, software.

But how about the people that really know how to “hack”? How do they do it? Well all hacking is, in basic terms, is sending data to a remote computer, as well as receiving data. That’s it. Nothing exciting. Sorry to disappoint all you hacker-wannabes, but it’s not all ultra high-tech like in the movies. That is called making it seem interesting as to draw viewers into watching the movie. Now let’s get back to the statement I made before.

It’s not just sending any data to a computer; it’s sending data that will return valuable data back to the hacker. In other words, an exploit of some sort. That’s where the expertise comes in.If this is hard to understand, let me give you all an example. Let’s say someone wanted to hack into your computer. If they wanted to do this 100% remotely without using any trojan horse to create an exploit (aka. backdoor) for them (will get into that later), what would they need to do? Find a service to exploit, no doubt. That’s all they have to work with. So, they use it.

Let’s say a friend gets you to download a file. They say it’s a very neat game that they made and that they want you to test it out for them. So you download it… Only to find it won’t run? You forget about it, and a few days later your friend has your password. What exactly happened? Well let’s see. That file he get you to run? It was probably a trojan horse. In other words, a file that looks like something harmless, but really creates an exploit (or backdoor) for the hacker. That is where it gets it’s name “trojan horse”; it’s outcomes are unexpected. That is also where the term “backdoor” got it’s name; it allows a secret “door” (service that runs returning valuable information to the hacker if he or she connects) to be made on the system.

Many times, if a computer is very secure, it won’t have any exploitable services for the hacker to use. So what would a hacker do? Create an exploit him or her self. This usually requires a bit of social engineering, because he or she actually has to get the target to run the trojan horse. But once it’s there, it usually runs in the background and waits for the hacker to connect to the service. There really isn’t an exploit needed here. If anything, the exploit is that the trojan is allowing the hacker to connect and gain control over the infected computer.

Fate and Co-incidenceVisualised by archtomato On Friday, December 23, 2005 at 1:34 Hrs | Minimum B.S.

Ok ok,

We are connected, each to the other, each to the earth, each to the universe. Our bodies and minds work by the same rules that guide the stars.

Our very atoms are starstuff.Are the connections internal to us or external? Does the question even have meaning? In the connections is what I might term God and perhaps another might term fate or coincidence … and when the separation ceases to matter, there ceases to need a separate identity. Fate and coincidence lie seperated by a very thin red line.

To be controlled by an irrepressible force is fate. To think that you are being controlled by an irrepressible force is purely coincidental.

The term is irrelevant. Need we hang on a specific, isolating, assignation of divinity?

Tomato on AdoptionVisualised by archtomato On Wednesday, December 21, 2005 at 0:00 Hrs | Minimum B.S.

Ok ok,

When I hear about people like Angelina Jolie adopting African orphans, it makes me feel like I’m not doing enough. But I have to be honest – adopting a baby seems like a lot of work, especially when you layer on the “flying to another country” part. I want to be nice, but not THAT nice. I was looking for an easier way to show the world that I’m a good person, and thanks to President Bush, I think I’ve found it.

The President wants people to adopt the embryos that can’t be used for stem cell research. An embryo would be the perfect adopted child. I’d just keep it in the fridge, claim a tax deduction for my new dependent, and fend off the advances of Brad Pitt who would probably be aroused by my caring attitude.

If my embryo gets lonely, I’ll get a few dozen more to keep it company. I don’t have much food in my fridge, so there would be no problem with storage, at least until the next power outage.

Embryo babies are not as cute as regular ones, I grant you that. But when you consider the convenience and economics of the situation, it’s hard to argue against them. You’d never need to buy clothes for an embryo. It never talks back, and it couldn’t have premarital sex no matter how hard it tried, despite easy access to condiments.

I’m not sure if I’d need to feed it. It probably comes with a pamphlet that tells me that sort of thing. I hope I get one that isn’t a fussy eater. I want to sprinkle lettuce in the Petri dish every few weeks when I think of it and call it good.

The hard part is naming it. I’m thinking along the lines of Nobert the Embryo.

Christmas is round the corner. WE all know that. Santa will be coming. We all know that. A few things about Santa that i feel that i should write about …

A logical point of view:

1. No known species of reindeer that can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer (which only Santa has ever seen.)

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total-378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.

3. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance-this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

Archtomato works in the IT security industry and has managed to convince his bosses for the past 10 years that his best work is yet to come.

Archtomato is a coffee nut, a photographer without focus, a traveler who can't read maps, a diver who floats all too easily and a champion of world peace.

He is an avid practitioner of the dark side of the force; admires Chuck Norris, Paris Hilton and collects vintage Batman comics. Just like the Horizon, Time Dilation, Flying pigs, Tax Reliefs and possibly, the "Opposition", he believes he is more of a concept than a corporeal being.

Archtomato believes that the true nature of man is decided in the battle between the conscious mind and the desires of the subconscious and that the evil of man's subconscious is often too strong to resist. The only way to win is to deny it battle.

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